[Linganth] Sep 21 - Austin Kozlowski - "Computational Structuralism" & Fall Schedule

[Language Machines]

Hello everyone,

We hope you've all enjoyed a restful and/or productive summer. After some
weeks of reading and conferencing, we are eager to pick up our online
discussions again.

On September 21, 2026 we look forward to welcoming *Austin Kozlowski
(Chicago*) to discuss his recently published article in *Theory &
Society* entitled
*"Computational Structuralism: Toward a Formal Theory of Meaning in the Age
of Digital Intelligence" *along with a short theoretical extension to the
paper (titled "Encoding, Decoding, and Meaning") which we will circulate a
week before the meeting.

Abstract: The discovery that “next-token predictor” language models can
fluently produce text has important but underappreciated theoretical
implications. Most notably, their success demonstrates that fully
relational models with no access to external referents or human actors are
sufficient to generate contextually appropriate discourse. Building upon
this insight, this article proposes computational structuralism, a
perspective that synthesizes insights from deep learning, information
theory, and French structuralism to interpret the success of large language
models and provide a vocabulary for rigorous and formalized inquiry into
systems of meaning. Computational structuralism conceptualizes the world as
an information system rife with pattern and redundancy. Patterned
observations can be compressed into latent structures that enable both
interpretation and the generation of contextually appropriate responses.
Large language models achieve this with web text, suggesting that
discourses can be sufficiently modeled as systems of transformations over a
set of relationally defined elements. Today’s AI models thus provide an
empirical “proof of concept” for what structuralist theorists sought to
achieve decades ago, a distillation of social life’s complexity into the
latent forms that render its content meaningful.

You can find Austin's paper at the following link and get a head start on
reading it: https://doi.org/10.1007-s11186-026-09685-z

*Please RSVP to get the Zoom link*
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd6qQZ6bWqiFeHkWFhI6URlsM4qsfOwXODLNYEn2qf4VijOXw/viewform?usp=dialog>
as well as a copy of the PDF (if you don't have access) *and the companion
piece (a week before the meeting)*.

After September, we look forward to more stimulating discussions with the
following confirmed guests:

19 October 2026: Graham Jones (MIT), AI and Education (The MIT Report
<https://aiandeducation.mit.edu/report/>)
16 November 2026: Lucy Suchman (Lancaster), What is language?
21 December 2026: TBD
18 January 2027: Jason Litzenberg (Oslo), chapter from his forthcoming
book *The
Language Singularity*

If you have a work in progress you'd like feedback on, please get in touch
for an open slot. Feel free to circulate this email and to reach out if you
have any questions or comments.

See you soon!
Anna and Siri
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